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Tuesday, 3 September 2013

Bell Pits of Street Gate (NZ210592)

A little to the east of Sunniside, scattered liberally over
the junction of the A692 and Pennyfine Road, lies the small community known as
Street Gate. Wood- and meadow-land lie strewn hereabouts, and in a patch of
land betwixt the village and its larger neighbour to the west was recently
found the remnants of two old bell-pits.

Bell-pits, as I am sure many of you will know, are relics of
the earliest days of mining – coalmining, of course, in this case – dating back
to the 14th-17th centuries. Basically, a gang of prospectors would
sink a simple shaft into the ground where they had reason to believe there was
coal to be found, then they would gradually mine out a small underground room
and hoist the black stuff to the surface by basket. When the bell-shaped pit
assumed dangerous proportions, they would simply abandon it and move down-seam
by sinking another shaft a few dozen yards away. They would back-fill the old
pit with the earth taken from the new one.

In the centuries that followed mining techniques developed
considerably, of course. But odd remnants of the bell-pit system remain dotted
around the region – and two such shafts were unearthed here at Street Gate by
the Woodland Trust during deep ploughing work when they were preparing to lay a
wild flower meadow. Two circular ‘gaps’ in the underlying boulder clay were
noticed (each about six metres across), and investigative work revealed them to
be evidence of our most basic of early industrial activity.

Studies of old maps pinned the dates down to at least as
early as the 1630s, but such activity would most likely have stretched back in
the area to perhaps the 14th century. Such was the significance of
the discovery that it was decided to launch a campaign to mark the spot in some
way, and in October 2007 the revamped site together with a plaque/plinth was
officially unveiled amidst great pomp and ceremony.

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